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Page 46
He passed on, came to the second window and paused again. The brief,
almost breathless silence within, which had followed the Kid's laugh,
had already been dissipated by the customary Casa Blanca sounds; a
guitar was strumming, chips clicked, a bottle was set heavily upon the
bar, a chair scraped. Norton frowned; a moment ago something happened
in there to still men's tongues. What was it? It was Galloway who
gave him his answer.
"So you came, did you, Vidal?" There was a jeer in the heavy voice.
"Scared to come, eh? And scared worse to stay away!" Galloway's short
laugh was as unpleasant as ever Rickard's had been.
"Si; I am here," the voice of Vidal Nu�ez was answering, quick, eager,
sibilant with its unmistakable nervous excitement. "Pete tell me what
you say an' I come." He lifted his voice abruptly, breaking into a
soft Southern oath. "Like a cat, to jump through the little window an'
roll on the floor an' by God, jus' in time. There is one man at the
back with a gun an' one man in front an' another man . . ."
"Let 'em come," cried Galloway loudly, a heavy hand smiting a table top
so that a glass jumped and fell breaking to the floor. "Only," and he
sent his voice booming out warningly, "any man who chips in unasked and
starts trouble in my house can take what's coming to him."
So then Vidal had just arrived, it had been his sudden entrance which
had invoked the silence in the barroom. Norton merely shrugged; there
had been a chance of taking Vidal alone, intercepting him. But that
chance had not been one to wait for; now it was past, negligible, not
to be regretted. At last he knew where Vidal Nu�ez was and it was his
business to make an arrest and not to wait upon further chance. The
man who is not ready to go into a crowd to get his law-breaker is not
the man to stand for sheriff in the southwest country.
"Coming, Galloway!" Norton's ringing shout came back in answer.
Suddenly the steady pulse of his blood had been stirred, the hot hope
stood high in his heart again that he and Jim Galloway were going to
look into each other's eyes with guns talking and an end of a long
devious trail in sight. For the moment he half forgot Vidal Nu�ez whom
he could fancy cowering in a corner.
Then when he knew that every man in the Casa Blanca had turned sharply
at his voice he ran from the window to the street, turned the corner of
the building and in at the wide front doorway. A short hall, a closed
door confronting him . . . then that had been flung open and on its
threshold, a gun in each hand, his hat far back on his head, his eyes
on fire, he stood looking in on a half dozen men and three glinting
steel barrels which, describing quick arcs, were whipped from the
window toward him. A gun in Galloway's hand, one in the hand of Vidal
Nu�ez, the third already spitting fire as Kid Rickard's narrowed eyes
shone above it. The other men had fallen back precipitately to right
and left; Norton noted that Elmer Page was among them, a pace or two
from Rickard's side.
The Kid, being young, had something of youth's impatience, perhaps the
only reminiscence of youth left in a calloused soul. So it was that he
had shot a second too soon. Norton, as both hands rose in front of
him, answered Kid Rickard with the smaller-caliber gun while the Colt
in his right hand was concerned impartially with Galloway and Vidal
Nu�ez, standing close together. The Kid cursed, his voice rose in a
shriek of anger rather than pain, and he spun about and fell backward,
tripping over an overturned chair.
"Shoot, Galloway!" cried Norton. "Shoot, damn you, shoot!"
Now, as for the second time that day the two men confronted each other,
naked, hot hatred glaring out of their eyes, each man knew that he
stood balancing a crucial second, midway between death and triumph.
Jim Galloway, who never until now had come out into the open in
defiance of the law, must swallow his words under the eyes of his own
gang, or once and for all forsake the semi-security behind his ambush.
Again issues were clear cut.
He answered the sheriff with a curse and a stream of lead. As he fired
he threw himself to the side, the old trick, his gun little higher than
his hip, and fired again. And shot for shot Norton answered him.
Though but half the length of a room lay between them, as yet, neither
man was hurt. For no longer were they in the rich light of the
swinging coal-oil lamp; the room was gathered in pitch darkness; their
guns spat long tongues of vivid flame. For, just as Kid Ricard was
falling, while Jim Galloway's finger was crooked to the trigger, while
Antone was whipping up his gun behind the bar, there had come a shot
from the card-room door shattering the lamp. Neither Norton nor
Galloway, Rickard nor Vidal Nu�ez, nor Antone nor any of the other men
in the room saw who had fired the shot.
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